 	“The Hate U Give” (2018) by Angie Thomas follows a Black teenage girl, Starr Carter, who attends Williamson Prep, a priviledged white high school. However, her home is in Garden Heights, a Black neighborhood. Throughout the book, Starr starts to struggle  to keep her culturally-clashing school life separate from her home life.  
   The differences between the two aspects of Starr’s life is demonstrated by her interactions with people in her daily life. As a Black woman, Starr knows to always tread carefully around police officers and listen to their instructions, since violating these rules may mean death. One night, when Starr and her childhood friend Khalil are driving home together from a party, they’re unexpectedly pulled over by a police officer. Before they know it, Khalil is shot and killed by Officer One-Fifteen. The rest of the story follows Starr as she navigates the loss and outrage of Khalil’s death. 
  While reading this story, I could truly feel the anger that Starr was experiencing at the injustice in the world. She wanted to get justice for Khalil, but that justice could potentially be dangerous to herself and her family. 
  “The Hate U Give” is a must-read story about racism, police brutality, and fighting for what’s right. This novel is about challenging social norms and fighting back against injustice. While this particular story may be fictional, it’s raw and significant to gaining a deeper understanding of what many Black people have to experience every day. This story is more than your average fiction story; for so many people, it’s reality.

The Impact of Black Stories on Literature - The Hate U Give

“Diversity is our power,” read a sign held up by a protest-er outside the United States Supreme Court on October 31.  They  were  protesting  for  one  specific  reason  —  the  Supreme Court seems poised to scrap affirmative action, a series of policies passed by the government that man-dates that colleges accept more diverse pools of students. Within a school as academically competitive as PHS, con-tention surrounding the subject is undeniable. Students and  faculty  at  PHS  and  the  Princeton  community  as  a  whole should refine our understanding of the topic and understand why it is such a shame that the Supreme Court will probably rule affirmative action as unconstitutional. We need to find a way to reckon with the opportunities that  such  a  decision  would  take  away  from  minorities,  because the loss of affirmative action would also result in a  devastating  loss  of  equality  and  diversity  in  America’s  elite colleges, and, by extension, its eventual leadership.  Many assume that the anti-discrimination laws the U.S. has,  which  protect  people  from  explicit  discrimination  on  the  basis  of  race,  gender,  and  sexuality,  are  enough,  but  that  is  far  from  the  truth.  Those  who  belong  to  un-derrepresented  racial  minorities  still  experience  great  inequality  on  college  campuses  and  private  workplaces.  In order for this gap in enrollment and hiring to slowly close,  affirmative  action  should  not  be  struck  down.  A  study  by  Georgetown  University  in  2021  found  that  11  percent of Latinx people and 14 percent of Black people over  the  age  of  25  have  a  bachelor’s  degree,  compared  to  21  percent  of  white  people  and  31  percent  of  Asian  people.  This  discrepancy  also  resulted  in  lower  average  yearly salaries for Black and Latinx people. When college admission  offices  take  affirmative  action  into  consid-eration,  they  also  help  to  decrease  those  problems.  The  wealth gap will only increase without affirmative action.   Already, affirmative action has been made illegal in pub-lic universities across several states. This has left some top universities from states like California and Michigan fac-ing massive declines in student diversity. In 2021, report-ers at The New York Times found that one such school, the  University  of  California,  Berkeley,  had  a  freshman  class  of  6,931  students,  and  of  those  students,  only  258  were  Black  and  27  were  Native  American.  Clearly,  without affirmative action, the diversity of student bod-ies  at  top  colleges  across  the  country  would  plummet.    In  2022,  The  Daily  Princetonian  found  that  most  Princeton  University  students  are  in  strong  support  of  affirmative  action.  A  group  known  as  AASA  (Asian  American  Students  Association)  that  has  led  a  peti-tion  to  voice  their  support  for  affirmative  action.  PHS  students  should  also  make  their  voices  heard  about  the  subject,  or  at  least  find  ways  to  help  increase  di-versity  wherever  they  go  to  college,  which  will  likely  be  after  affirmative  action  is  ruled  unconstitutional.   Proponents of what will likely be the Supreme Court’s ruling  on  the  subject  claim  that  income-based  affir-mative  action  will  do  more  good  than  race-based  af-firmative   action.   Unfortunately,   there’s   no   guarantee   that  such  policies  will  be  passed.  But  additionally,  low  income  white  students  do  much  better  on  the  SAT  than  their  black  counterparts,    and  also  make  up  much  more  of  the  low  income  population  (in  sheer  num-bers),  which  is  why  the  Journal  of  Blacks  in  Higher  Education  finds  in  2014  that  income  based  affirmative  action  would  ensure  that  white  students  “continue  to  hold  a  huge  admission  advantage  over  Black  students.”    In  reality,  PHS  students  can‘t  do  much  about  the  fact  that  the  Supreme  Court  will  likely  rule  affirma-tive  action  unconstitutional.  They  can,  however,  real-ize  how  the    decision  will  be  harmful,  and  strive  to  make   sure   their   classes,   extracurriculars,   and   jobs are accurately reflecting the diversity of our nation. 

The Tower

Sydney Raivetz's Work

The Tower